1 | i- COME’12 Use of Twitter by Club Fans Selami Özsoy Email: selamio@gmail.com University of Abant İzzet Baysal School of Physical Education and Sport Department of Sport Management Bolu, Turkey Abstract Social networking sites which are Web 2.0 applications have become widespread and there are of usage has increased. The study aims to investigate the purpose of using the social networking site, Twitter by club fans. The sample of the study is composed of fans from Spor Toto (Turkish football pool) Football Super League Clubs Galatasaray and Trabzonspor with registered official Twitter accounts. A 20-item data collection tool was developed in line with the literature and expert views and was published in an internet site for a whole month in August. The views of the 452 fans that filled in the form were analyzed. Results show that the new social networking site Twitter has been mostly followed by males between 18-24 ages that are fans of sports clubs. Fans have stated that they mostly follow Twitter in order to learn about the views of footballers and sports managers. Its interactive features and provision of direct and reliable information by Twitter have been stated as the reasons of high preferences for Twitter compared with the other medias. Key words: Social networks, Twitter, media, sport. Introduction Internet, one of the most important discoveries of the mankind and which has become quite widespread in the last decade of the 20 th century has caused substantial transformations regarding the mass media. Internet which has gained popularity in the West especially since mid 90s got more popular in a shorter time compared to classical mass media such as newspapers, radio and television. Internet based “Social networking sites” has started to be a part of daily life as the first product of informatics of the third millennium. Social networking sites called “social media” which turn out to be an ever increasing social concept are defined as “community based web sites that allow the sharing of knowledge, experiences and perspectives”. Social media has demolished the geographical walls and created the concept of “online community” (Weinburg, 2009: l). Social media are a part of what is referred to as Web 2.0. Web 1.0, followed by Web 2.0, was characterized as mostly a one-way communication system. On Web 1.0, a person or company would generate a website and expect the target people to visit the website. Internet sites would offer a limited setting to create and spread a